Good day. Tough day.
I got up early to be sure that I was available for the mechanic that I was trying out on a few jobs today. She was driving down from Noel, Missouri.
It didn’t go well at all. 😕
First of all, she was 20 plus minutes late to the first job, which was a no crank, no start condition. That’s one of the most common issues that we face, and generally it’s one of the easier issues to diagnose, as there are not that many possible causes for a no crank, no start compared to other issues.
But it was totally over her head. 😕
The battery was low voltage, so she assumed it was just a bad battery. She thought she had tested the alternator, but then I realized she had no idea how to test an alternator. She thought you could test it with the vehicle off, which is one of the most basic concepts that anyone should learn when they’re in school is that you cannot test an alternator unless it’s being run.
I had high hopes because she had ASE certifications in five different areas, but she was out of her element completely in pretty much the most basic automotive knowledge that anyone could learn.
She made mistakes in other areas, including not checking the oil level before starting the car, and telling me the wrong oil type for the vehicle when I went to order oil for the car because it was so low that it wasn’t even reading on the dipstick.
(sigh)
Seems like a nice woman over the phone, but she’s obviously going to need extensive training on the job in order to be capable of working on her own. I guess the ASE certification tests must be a lot easier than I thought they were. That’s pretty scary to me that a person can graduate with that many certifications and not have any idea what they’re doing. 😕
Anyway, so I had to cancel the rest of the jobs for the day, as that was the easiest of the three, and now I’ve got customers that are waiting for me to get there tomorrow, but I’m going to get there without any tools as my tools are still in transit and won’t arrive until Saturday night.
I wasn’t expecting to have to wrench myself. I was going out to try and figure out and finalize working with the new employee so I could come back out to Utah and have somebody working for me while I’m out with my aunt for her last days.
So now I’m heading back to Arkansas for a cleanup trip, in triple digit temperatures, and without tools. I’m going to have to buy hundreds of dollars worth of tools when I get there just to make sure I can take care of my customers who got the shaft today.
Ugh.
Anyway, so that’s been a big challenge today, as I’d started answering the phone again because I thought I had a super qualified mechanic who was going to be able to jump Right In and fix cars, and now I’ve got a long waiting list of customers who I’ve told I’ll get taken care of only to find out that I personally am going to have to do it.
Moving on…
After canceling the appointments for today, rescheduling, etc, I went over to my brother’s school that he started a handful of years ago, maybe 5? I don’t remember for sure. It was neat to see everything that he’s done and how the school operates right now. Took me back to 2010 when I was working on starting a school of my own. Things were going really well, and I found a school that was extremely interested in my curriculum and teaching approach, but then I relapsed in my pornography addiction, and in my humiliated state, and trying to run away from having to face the direct consequences of my relapse, I left the state and didn’t come back for like 5 weeks.
Because of that, the school thing never worked out for me. It’s a painful spot in my history because that was a huge dream of mine. One more thing destroyed by that addiction and my pride that kept me from being willing to own up to it at the time.
Hate that addiction.
After touring the school, I headed up to salt lake, where I took back the manifold gauge set that I used the first week I was here to try and fix the AC in my civic. Then I went out to lunch with my friend Robyn and a couple of her employees.
After that, I went to dinner with my friend Cory, and we talked for a long time. I’ve regressed quite a bit and am struggling again just with life in general, discouragement with where I’m at, what’s happened, what’s been lost, what feels like will never be. I’m trying to choose selflessness and not selfishness, but it’s hard right now. Very hard.
Today was the 20th, and the day my sales tax submissions and payments are due in arkansas, so I got those done about 30 minutes ago, and now it’s time for me to go to bed. I’ve got a headache. I guess I must be over the edge, though I feel like I’ve done pretty well at taking care of myself nutritionally, so I’m not sure what’s up, but whatever. Got to get up about 3:30 or 3:45 or so to be at the airport by 4:30. I’m tired. The hopefulness that I had yesterday is deflated, and I’m just… tired.
But tomorrow is a new day, so I’ll do my best to shrug this off and give my heart to the world even if it happens to be a broken one.
Love and hugs.
Lift the World
~ stephen
Lift the World 
I love you, Stephen! Your brain – like so many people’s- is addicted to sadness, cortisol. Like some are addicted to dopamine, runners needing that chemical high of their own making. Adrenaline junkies who need the thrill scare chemical. This is a thing. Your brain searches out things you can do nothing about (things that are past, imaginary futures) in order to feel all the cortisol of feeling low. It wants to wallow. Feeling bad is its usual state and it has made giant neuropathways to make sure it gets that chemical rush. You can build mental roads around it, though. It takes awareness, conscious effort and hard work, but just being aware, or by using CBT techniques, you can rebuild your neural pathways. Past and future are imaginary, and your imagination has your now in a stranglehold. Time to kick this one. The obstacle becomes the way.